A Lesson in
Creationist Ethics FeaturingWalter ReMine and Fred Williams

Robert Rapier

Background

Previously, I was a regular contributor at the Internet forum
of the Organization of Creationist Websites (OCW). I posted simply under my first name,
Robert, because I didn't want my privacy invaded by someone who might take exception to
any of my arguments. The OCW board had long been my favorite Creationist operated board,
because the moderation of the board was always very fair. Moderation, when it occurred,
was very mild and fair to Creationists and evolutionists alike.

Creationist Fred Williams was also a regular contributor at the
OCW board. Fred had posted several complaints over the moderation of the board, and he
felt like changes needed to be made to attract some prominent Creationists. Walter ReMine,
author of The Biotic Message,
1 is one of the more prominent names in Creationist circles. Fred
had frequently argued Mr. ReMine's position on the board, and sometimes acted as his
spokesman. Fred indicated that he might get some Creationists of Mr. ReMine's caliber to
come to the board if stricter moderation was enacted.

On January 13, 2002, a series of announcements was made
regarding the administration of the board. The two long time moderators both resigned and
were replaced by four anonymous moderators. An announcement was made by Creationist Samuel
Bollinger, which read in part "Although we highly value the input of all our
members and realize we couldn't exist without you, the fact is 98% of our hits are
visitors (lurkers). As a Christian YEC organization, we feel the board has not been
meeting our expectations for these visitors."

Biased
Moderation

The change in moderation was immediately
noticeable. Two of the moderators, known simply as Moderator 3 and Moderator 4, were
especially heavy-handed. Fred Williams had posted a new article critical of the fossil
record.2 There were a number of
clear errors and misrepresentations in the article, and he received feedback from several
people. One of the long-time evolutionist posters on the board had an entire response to
Mr. Williams deleted because one of the anonymous moderators (Moderator 3) declared that
in his opinion, a single statement was a "clear misrepresentation". This
had long been a catch phrase of Mr. Williams. This aroused suspicion about the identity of
the new moderator, but I could not imagine that Mr. Williams would anonymously moderate a
debate in which he was participating.

One of my posts was deleted the same day. I
had posted several statements from Mr. Williams that were clear misrepresentations.
Moderator 3 immediately deleted my post and then commented that in his opinion Mr.
Williams was not guilty of misrepresentation. Two other posts were deleted for pointing
out some of the atrocious grammatical errors in Williams' article. It was not lost on me
that every post deleted to that point had been critical of Mr. Williams. However, it was
still difficult for me to believe that Mr. Williams would actually engage in anonymous
moderation in a debate in which he was participating.

The next day Mr. Williams posted a long
rebuttal that contained a mildly off color remark. Moderator 3 had announced several times
that he would not be a line item editor; that any post violating any aspect of the board
rules would be completely deleted.

I decided to test the rules. I posted a reply
that highlighted Mr. Williams' use of the off color term. Under the guidelines that had
been clearly spelled out, Mr. Williams entire post should have been deleted, as it had
been made clear that there would be no line item editing. However, in this case the
offending term was merely removed, and a notation was added that indicated that the post
had been edited by Moderator 3. All follow-ups that had mentioned Williams' use of the
term were deleted. This incident had been a clearly biased application of the board rules,
and solidified my suspicion that Mr. Williams was acting as an anonymous moderator to
suppress dissenting opinions.

Walter ReMine Joins the Debate

Walter ReMine made his appearance on the
board during the turmoil. He replied to an article by Dr. Scott Page regarding hominid
evolution. In this article, Dr. Page pointed out a fundamental inconsistency in the
Creationist position. Creationists like ReMine take the position that evolution is much
too slow to account for the divergence of humans and chimps from a common ancestor in a
few million years. However, Dr. Page pointed out that the DNA of chimpanzees and bonobos
(pygmy chimpanzees) differs by millions of base pairs. This is inconsistent with the
Creation model, unless the two are considered separate "kinds". However, this
would have required the Ark to contain millions of species of closely related animals.
There are a number of animals that Creationists generally consider to be from the same
kind, but which differ by millions of DNA base pairs (wolves and coyotes, horses and
zebras, etc.). Many of these differ by more base pairs than do humans and chimpanzees;
hence the Creationist position is inconsistent.

Mr. ReMine responded and stated that Dr. Page
was misrepresenting his position. Mr. ReMine clarified his argument. He stated that his
argument did not concern the genetic differences between modern hominids, but between
modern man and an alleged human/chimpanzee common ancestor. Mr. ReMine asserted that by
applying the work of geneticist J. B. S. Haldane, he had shown that humans could have only
accrued some 1667 fixed, beneficial mutations over the common ancestor during the past 10
million years. He further stated that this fact has been confused, obscured, and prematurely cast
aside by biologists. But Mr. ReMine, an electrical engineer, indicated that his
contribution had been to recognize the neglect on the part of these biologists (working
within the field of their expertise) and to expose it.

At this point, I entered the debate and began
to engage Mr. ReMine.3 The debate
quickly degenerated as ReMine refused to answer direct questions. I simply requested that
Mr. ReMine support the statements he made in his book. He continued to evade the
questions, and became very testy. In his rebuttals, he began posturing by using terms like
"grotesque
misrepresentation" (many times), accused his critics of "trying to divert the
discussion", "telling just-so stories" and "introducing confusion
factors" and finally stated that we were "fringe evolutionists" using
pseudonyms to promote our views. He got really hung up on the pseudonym issue and used it
to try to distract from our arguments. Mr. ReMine accused me of diverting the discussion,
and stated "And diverting the issue costs him nothing, because 'Robert' ... is
anonymous." It turns out that this was an extraordinarily hypocritical statement.

During the dismantling of ReMine's thesis, Moderators 3 and 4 started wielding a
heavy hand. Dr. Page had multiple posts gutted or deleted. ReMine boasted that he had not
been refuted in the literature. Dr. Page pointed out that none of his claims were made in
the literature, so of course they werent refuted in the literature. This post was
deleted. Others weighed in on the argument and had their posts deleted. People who
questioned the deletions had their posts deleted.

I wrote a long, detailed rebuttal to ReMine
where I had bluntly pointed out all of his evasions, diversions, and refusal to answer
direct questions central to his argument. My entire rebuttal, very damaging to Mr.
ReMine's position, was deleted.

ReMine's final rambling post was left to
stand unanswered despite multiple violations of board rules. I complained to the moderator
about the double standards, and the response was effectively that perhaps Mr. ReMine had
indeed violated the board rules, but sometimes moderators have to make judgment calls. The
verdict from Moderator 3 was that ReMine's final post would stand unanswered. He also
indicated that Mr. ReMine had clearly scored points in the debate by pointing out that I
remained anonymous. This hypocrisy was soon to be exposed.

I was very certain that Moderator 3 was Fred
Williams, so I confronted him about it in a private message. I received the following
reply from Moderator 3:

Moderator 3: You have guessed incorrectly
as to who I am. Mr Williams did not delete your post, I deleted your post! I will remain
anonymous because it is important to objectivity. I suspect Mr Williams would NOT have
removed your post as it is apparent you have a history with each other. This demonstrates
my point.

Those words would
come back to haunt him.

Backlash

There were a number of complaints about the
new board rules, and not only from evolutionists. Creationist Bob Moore, later revealed to
be Moderator 2, wrote the following post:

Power and Prejudice,
"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely".

I have no idea how the board
administration is organized, but I suggest that all administrators get together and devise
some kind of uniform policy for dealing with remarks that might seem negative. Case in
point: An individual, whom I have invested several months of theological discussion in,
departs because mod 3 apparently didn't like some of his evo stuff. His departure notice
was quite civil. His comments disappear within a day. Someone else notes this fact, and
the irony of it, and his comment forthwith disappears. This is not good. Everyone,
especially visitors, looks at the admin board. How is it profitable to display the fact
that posts are frequently edited with hedge shears? This smacks of axe grinding, and
should not be found on a board run by Christians. Perhaps requiring the concurrence of two
or more administrators before deletion would alleviate the problem.

Bob Moore

Another Creationist poster wrote:

Though I am a creationist, I do
not like looking like I'm being pampered in a debate. Please moderators, ease up a
little.

CreationistAlltheWay

A number of the regular evolutionist posters
also added comments:

Over moderation is death on BBs. I say that you guys
should have far more of a "hands off" policy and only step in as a LAST resort.
There have been far too many posts removed over the past couple days. It
smacks of censorship and intimidation. Some of the posts that I have read before
they were removed (such as Huxter's in response to ReMine), while hard-hitting, contained
nothing that merited their removal that I could see (or at least that I remember--see, the
problem is that since it is gone I have nothing to refer back to and see if I remember
correctly. All I know it that I read it and now it is gone).

I won't tolerate this kind of overbearing use of the club to quash dissent or to remove
the teeth from a given argument. If this is the way this board is going to operate,
please forego the pretense of being an open board and just become a YEC only board like
the ICR does. It would be more intellectually honest, at least, than going about
chasing all us evos off. Writing, typing, and otherwise investing a lot of time,
effort, and research into posts only to have them disappear or be pulled for a sentence
somewhere that might offend someone quickly loses its charm.

Surely, Creationists on this board (including certain
big name ones) are not such hot-house flowers that they need their collective hands held
and must be shielded from us mean ol' evos.

John Boy

It looks like the OCW doesn't like
the way that the creationists get singed regularly. It doesn't like the message this
is sending out to all the lurkers about so-called "creation science". So
it's set about knobbling the arguments by deleting posts that are particularly damaging to
the creationist argument for spurious reasons.That's how it looks. I don't know how it is. But before the board dies,
lets have some openness.

Faramir

I agree with Faramir, I have
just read something by John Boy that was edited by 'Moderator 3'. I do not know what
John Boy had done by this moderator, whoever he is.

The moderation must be more open. Any editing of posts must be detailed, so that the
style of moderation can be commented on.

Do not delete posts, but add posts describing why they should not be repeated.

When editing posts, describe what was offensive about it.Remove the anonymity of the moderators.

Moderation is required on this site because it is a Christian site, so it has standards to
maintain, but Christian standards include openness and honesty.

Phil

Fred Williams had complained a few
weeks ago about not wanting to post on this board any more, and that he was going to try
to have a 'science only' board set up that would be strictly moderated.

Voila! A few weeks later, look what we have!

A 'discussion' board that guts the posts of evolutionists, allows the posts of
creationists - containing insults and aspersions - to remain unchecked.

Just what Fred wanted - a board where it looks like creation science has merit.

Of course, censorship is not that meritorious, is it?

Scott L. Page, PhD.

The response of the moderators to these
complaints was to delete most of them without comment. Just as the board had lost any
semblance of fairness, the previous board administrator, a very fair-minded Creationist
who posted as "Optional", regained control of the board. I later learned that
the original takeover of the board by Fred Williams et al. had been hostile, and that
Optional had eventually written a script to disable them and regain control of the board
(for which he had been paying the bills).

The Moderators Unmasked

Despite his denial, I had built a case
against Fred Williams as Moderator 3. I posted the evidence at the message board for the
No Answers in Genesis (NAiG) website. Surprisingly, Williams answered my post by admitting
that he had been Moderator 3, but insisted that it was only for a few days. He also denied
that he had been involved in much moderation. The irony of this was that even if he had
only been moderator for a few days, all of the original posts that were edited or deleted
were those critical of Williams.

However, I was recently informed that not
only was Williams Moderator 3, Walter ReMine was Moderator 4!
For me, this was the absolute height of hypocrisy. ReMine had tried to make an issue out
of my anonymity during the course of our debate. He even suggested that my arguments were
suspect because I was anonymous. Yet he had the audacity to act as an anonymous moderator
in a debate in which he was taking part. Are these the sort of ethics that Creationists
would teach our children?

Public confirmation of this information came
on October 8, 2002, when Creationist (and former Moderator 1) Samuel Bollinger issued the
following statement at CreationWeb (which succeeded OCW):

For the record - I was Mod 1, BobM was Mod 2, Fred was Mod 3 and ReMine was Mod
4.

Neither myself nor Bob did much moderating though - in fact, I quit soon after
and BobM protested the new moderation vehemently. The fact that Optional wanted BobM
is a testament to his fairmindedness.

If Fred or ReMine have anything to say, I guess they need to take it up with
me.4

SBollinger
Site Administrator

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don't think the actions of
Williams and ReMine are representative of all Creationists. Clearly, there were a number
of honest Creationists involved in this episode who tried to speak out against the
behavior of this vocal minority. However, their dissenting opinions were suppressed and
censored. If Creationists as a group hope to foster an image of honesty and integrity,
shenanigans like those perpetrated by Fred Williams and Walter ReMine must be exposed. If
they have to resort to dishonest and unethical behavior in order to win debates, then
maybe this is a sign that they are arguing from an untenable position.

In closing, I want to state for the record
that I gave Fred Williams a chance to respond to these accusations by posting some of this
information in the guest book at his website. His response? None, he just banned me from
posting in or viewing his guest book.

References

4.http://www.creationweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=151Note: This information was removed about a week after it was publicized.
Presumably, Williams and/or ReMine complained when people began to ask them about this
incident. Since they would have had a difficult time explaining their actions, it is
likely that they applied pressure to have Mr. Bollinger's announcement removed.
Regardless, this was the announcement as it appeared on October 8, 2002. However, this
information had originally been given to me by a different source.